Assorted

Don’t you think I’d look awesome on this Vespa? I don’t have a driver’s license anymore (in order to get a disabled parking sticker I had to surrender it) so I wouldn’t be at the helm but Ten or Jen could. I’d ride in the sidecar. Doesn’t that sound awesome?

Yup, I totally need this Vespa.
~~~
My Christmas cactus keeps getting bigger and more flourescently fabulous. It’s the plant version of RuPaul.

Did you see the Australian movie The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert. I loved that film—such depth, hope and life.

There was a Hollywood version: To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar. Not the same script but the same idea—three Drag Queens on a road trip across a large continent. I never saw it. Why not? First, I’ve never cared for the actor Patrick Swayze. He’s always struck me as a muscled up apple fritter with his small town middle America, star football player, homecoming king looks. Obliviousness radiates off him. BORING! Second, Hollywood versions of independent and foreign films, like Disney versions of fairy tales, are so fucking sanitized and glitzed up. I figured it’d be like the big studio version of Return of the Secaucus 7, The Big Chill, with hot, big name stars, easy answers, fabulous soundtrack and no one struggling to pay their bills. Sorry/not sorry, I can’t relate.

Back to drag though—I’m in full agreement with RuPaul who’s said “We’re all born naked, and the rest is drag.”

Mark Twain said that “Clothes do not merely make the man…clothes are the man.”

To my mind, the minute we don clothes and leave the house, we’re in drag. Drag isn’t just gender bending, it’s about embracing and becoming different parts of ourselves. Okay, maybe that’s just me.

When I was a trainer at a big print/copy company, I wore biz acceptable dresses, skirts and pants versus sweats, jeans or leggings. I became the role of engaged, hopefully entertaining, diplomatic and professional educator.

Alternatively, when I’d go out to the live music clubs, I’d wear my most hip duds—vintage jackets and dresses, fishnets, iridescent  6” platform boots, bright purple Docs and the like. I’d pogo and thrash to the band’s tunes like there was no tomorrow. Was that a role? Maybe but it felt like home—like this, flashed out and bopping, was who I really was.

Now? Since I stopped working in an office, since surgeries, procedures, chemo and rehab have become my full time job, I no longer dress up. Clothing is, for the most part, purely functional. Yeah, I still wear a lot of tie dye and other hippy dippy stylings but, like the vintage outfits of my club days, these feel comfortably right.

Am I in drag? I don’t think so. I’m just, on some days, creatively outfitted.
 
It takes courage to grow up and become who you really are.
~ e.e. cummings

If I were to go full Drag Queen, who would I be? The Silver Surfer and/or Mazikeen (the demon from Neil Gaiman’s comic book series The Sandman). I suppose that’d be cos-play versus drag though. //shrugs//
~~~
Don’t be satisfied with stories, how things have gone with others. Unfold your own myth.
~ Rumi, The Essential Rumi
~~~
Word for the Day:
Rhotacize
    verb (used with object)
to change a sound to an r.

Yeah, this is SO damn useful. Here in eastern Massachusetts the letter r is silent except when it follows another consonant (e.g. cretin) or is the first letter of a word (e.g. rutabaga). 

For example:
 The rest of the U.S.    Home (AKA Valhalla, Massachusetts)
      Bar                              Bah
      Garlic                          Gahlic
      Actor                          Actah
      Martyr                        Mahtah
      Parlor                         Pahlah

Oh wait, I think I just reverse rhotacized.